This is one of those incredibly bad ideas that everyone seemed to have at the same time. Maybe it had to do with the coincidence of a fad for aviation and one for skyscrapers. Whatever the reason, they never really address the catastrophic consequences of a crash, nor the problems of traffic management.

Airplane Field for Tall City Buildings

New invention is expected to solve the problem of providing aviation facilities for large cities. Platforms are designed to operate on the roofs of large buildings and permit happy landings and easy take-offs.

AN invention of J. Herbert Jones of Brooklyn, N.Y., is expected to revolutionize the problem of airplane landings and take-offs in restricted areas, such as on the tops of large buildings, decks of ships, water fronts along the coast, or small land areas.

STRANGE-looking craft that take off and land on rooftop airports, operate via automatic flight instruments and controlled by electronic traffic cops are some of the things in store for the air traveler of 1965. Dream stuff? Not according to Civil Aeronautics Administration experts who made the above predictions. Many such planes are already working models or on drawing boards. Limited runway space will mean more and more vertical takeoff and land (VTOL) ships in the air. Passenger planes will have tilting wings and power plants on a horizontal body and will rise and land like helicopters. Skyscraper roofs will be the “fields” for the aircraft of tomorrow.

WITH the rapid growth of airplane transportation, the air port of the future may be moved up into the center of the city where it will be easily accessible. A bold step in this direction has been taken by Charles Clever, a London architect, who has constructed a model for a proposed airport to be located in the heart of London. The landing field consists of four runways arranged in the form of a giant wheel, the entire structure being supported by the buildings over which it is erected, as illustrated.

WHAT the metropolitan skyport of tomorrow may look like, as conceived by Nicholas DeSantis, New York commercial artist, is shown in the illustration below. His remarkable proposal, embodied in a model that he has completed after five years’ study of the project, calls for a 200-story building capped by an airplane field eight city blocks long and three blocks wide. A lower level of his “aerotrop-olis,” as he has named it, offers a port for lighter-than-air craft. Hangars for planes and airships occupy the top fifty floors.

Airport-Docks for New York
The hardest thing in aerial travel, nowadays, is not to fly, but to get quickly to and from the airport; especially in such cities as New York. An architect, Harry B. Brainerd, has worked out a solution in connection with the great docks which will be built for the new huge liners. Roofing over the docks, as shown, will afford landing space for airplanes; while the great covered docks will serve also as hangars for dirigibles, as shown in the central slip above. Passengers can transfer almost instantaneously from ship to plane, by using the elevators. Between the slips, the available dock space will be utilized by offices, factories and warehouses. The projected port is to be 1,025×1,700 feet, pier buildings 115′ wide, 200′ high.

Three hundred feet wide and nearly a quarter of a mile long, an airplane landing field which can be revolved to point into the wind perches atop a thirty-one-story building designed as a city hall, in a unique model recently presented for the consideration of Detroit, Mich., municipal officials. Costing about $8,000,000, the proposed structure would be erected on a river-bank site easily reached by land and water transportation.